Absences, injuries, and tactical nonsense: three at the back?

For the Vancouver match, we do have a bit of good news: Nick Rimando and Arturo Alvarez will both be available for selection. One of those is great news, and the other is, well, it’s news, isn’t it? To be fair, I really do want to see Arturo make a positive mark at this club. I wish we could peer into a crystal ball and see what’s happened to him, but that’s a bit much to ask. Having Nick available is great, and he’ll be travelling to join up with the U.S. camp after the match.

We will, however, be missing a few: Kyle Beckerman — whom I thought we’d certainly be missing regardless of national team duty, but unless I’ve missed something, he hasn’t received a longer suspension for his headbutt (anyone able to clarify?) — as well as Jean Alexandre, Will Johnson, and Alvaro Saborio. You know, most would think we’d really miss at least two of those latter three, but after recent performances, I’m not so sure about that. I’ll let you decide what exactly I mean by that, because at this point, I’m not so certain.

Should we employ a tactical shift?

Thankfully, we’re not exactly looking ever the part of the walking wounded, but the question marks over Robbie Russell and the continued absence of Tony Beltran (damn his groin!) mean we’re still likely to continue with Wingert on the right and Schuler on the left. At this point, if I were Jason Kreis, I’d actually be inclined to throw the dice a bit and go with a 3-4-3 or 3-5-2 formation.

Without Kyle to drop into the back (Alvarez is clearly not as inclined to do that at this point), I don’t think we’d run into crowding issues, and with some time to mull it over, I think it would actually work reasonably well. With Schuler on the left and Olave on the right, both serving as center backs who chase down play, and Borchers in the center acting more as an anchor, I think we’d have a good chance with our midfield.

The diamond would necessarily have to widen, so I’d employ Wingert on the left and Warner on the right — he’s not as defensively sound as I’d like, but he does play in quite wide positions. If we employ five in the midfield, we’d need two central men, perhaps Ned Grabavoy and Yordany Alvarez, who would fight for possession and employ our pressing game, and we could use Gil or Morales in the playmaker spot. Alternately, we could go with both Gil and Morales, with Alvarez sitting deeper, but I’m not sure we’d have an effective enough shield.

I suppose it’s not likely, but it’s interesting to consider. Our personnel at current almost seems better suited to that than our diamond 4-3-1-2, but I’m not exactly Jason Kreis out here. At any rate, it’ll be interesting to see how we line up against Vancouver.

Finally, apologies for yesterday’s late post: The day got a bit ahead of me and my ability to plan ineffectively (er, inability to plan effectively? One of the two. I like the former.) backfired on me. Ah, well.